General
- What is Primavera, exactly?
Primavera is not just a single product, but is now a brand name covering a suite of products focused exclusively on helping project-intensive businesses manage their entire project portfolio lifecycle, including projects of all sizes. Professionals manage projects totaling more than US$15 trillion in value using Primavera products.
- What is a “standalone” copy of P6?
This typically refers to a copy of P6 where the database and client application are running on the same machine – often a laptop. After releasing P6 v7, developers switched the database to Oracle XE, but they withdrew the standalone option in R8.0. They reintroduced it with P6 R8.1 PPM.
- Can you configure P6 PPM as a multiuser system?
Although the most common use for P6 PPM is as a “standalone” installation (see below) on a laptop or single PC, it is perfectly possible to configure it so that multiple networked PCs access a single server based database. If you do not require the web based dashboards and integration capabilities of P6 EPPM this may well be your most suitable configuration.
Portfolio and Programme Management
- What is Portfolio Management?
Project management professionals use the term “portfolio management” to describe methods for analyzing and collectively managing a group of current or proposed projects based on numerous key characteristics. The fundamental objective is to determine the optimal mix and sequencing of proposed projects to best achieve the organisation’s overall goals – typically expressed in terms of hard economic measures, business strategy goals, or technical strategy goals – while honouring constraints imposed by management or external real-world factors.
- What is Programme Management?
- Which Primavera products offer this functionality?
Both P6 PPM and P6 EPPM provide the ability to group projects together into “portfolios”, but this is simply a mechanism for simplifying access to specific groups of projects. A portfolio is defined to contain projects within a specific programme, and reports can be produced for the portfolio/programme as a whole.
Project Management
- Is Primavera P6 the same as Oracle Projects?
No. Oracle Projects is part of the Oracle E-Business Suite. The Primavera Gateway is used with a suitable “provider” (connector) to integrate P6 and EBS.
- What’s the difference between P3E, P5 and P6?
They are basically different versions of the same product. When the replacement for P3 was first released it was known as Primavera Project Planner Enterprise, which was soon shortened to P3E. There was a v3.5 and a v4.0 of this product, before the name changed to P5 and then P6 in line with the version number.
- What’s the difference between P6 and Primavera Contractor?
Primavera Contractor is Primavera’s entry level project management product, designed to allow contractors to exchange planning data with clients using P6 EPPM or PPM for their project management. It offers a similar level of functionality to Microsoft Project but can generate the .xer files typically required for bid submissions on major engineering and construction projects. More information on Primavera Contractor is available here. You may also find this feature comparison chart useful.
- What are the differences between P6 EPPM and P6 PPM?
The most obvious difference is the architecture. P6 PPM is a traditional client/server Windows application that runs on a PC (physical or virtual) and stores its data in a relational database (Oracle or SQL Server). P6 EPPM is a 3 tier web application whose client runs in a web browser. The middle tier runs on a web application server (WebLogic or WebSphere) and communicates with the database. The final major difference is connectivity.
- Which project management product is right for me?
There is no easy answer to this, as a lot depends on your current IT landscape and precisely how you wish to make use of your planning tool.
Business Intelligence and Reporting
- What reports come with Primavera P6?
Primavera P6 PPM ships with a library of text reports which can be scheduled to run as a batch. It is possible to develop custom reports and print out graphics such as Gantt Charts or resource histograms from the appropriate view.
- What is the Primavera Reporting Database?
There is a large amount of data displayed within P6 that is calculated on the fly and not stored in the project management database (PPMDB or EPPMDB). As a result Oracle introduced the concept of a reporting database external to the project management database. This is optimised for reporting purposes and contains fields storing calculated values.
- What is Primavera Analytics?
Primavera Analytics is an add-on product for Primavera P6 EPPM which consists of a star schema data warehouse and a set of prebuilt reports and queries that run within Oracle Business Intelligence products. The data warehouse receives data from the EPPM reporting database an can also connect to other BI applications.
Risk Analysis
- What’s the difference between Primavera Risk Analysis and PertMaster?
- Does Primavera P6 contain any risk analysis functionality?
Contract Management
- What does Primavera Contract Management do?
This product has always had a confusing name, as the one thing it does not do is manage contracts. It is designed for teams managing construction projects (contracts). It enables collaboration, track issues and costs, monitor contractor performance and manage documents.
Implementation, Interfacing and Integration
- P6 integration with an ERP system?
The Primavera Gateway ships with a connector for SAP as standard, and connectors for other ERP systems are also available.
- P6 be interface with an Asset Management system?
Connectors are available for common Asset Management Systems like MAXIMO.
- I need to develop a bespoke interface to P6 – what options do I have?
For a desktop solution one can use the SDK. It has a proportion of the data within the project management database as an ODBC Data Source.
Training
